Hey Jarhead! I thought you only did your survival scenarios on Friday?

Yeah, unfortunately these are headlines from Saturday’s MSNBC main page. Here it is August and we’re starting to see the effects of no stimulus money propping up the economy. The politicians in Washington screwed around long enough with the debt ceiling debacle to scare the bejeebers out of the rest of the world resulting in a US credit rating downgrade. The Chinese jumped in and said we have to “cure out addiction to debt.” It sucks when other countries tell us how to run our business, it’s worse when they’re giving you good advice.

One story talks about how the economy is doing fine and the next says the country is going down in economic flames. The market looks like they’re tracking a yoyo, London is rioting because a cop shot someone, and other parts of Europe are waking up to the fact that their debt is going to crush them. There’s a drought in Texas and a couple of wars over seas that we can’t afford monetarily, much less the cost in military personnel.

Inflation is shrinking our pay checks, people are still out of work, and the government is paralyzed with uncertainty.

Uncertain times indeed.

I’ve said before that I’m apolitical. I don’t care who’s in office as long as they’re doing a good job. Democrat. Republican. Teabagger. Independent. I really don’t care. Obama inherited a mess from his predecessors – both Republican and Democrat -and hasn’t done much if anything to make it better. I had high hopes for him, but now we’re entering unknown waters with the size of the debt and the credit rating downgrade and as much as people try to predict what’s going to happen it’s all up in the air right now.

In other posts I’ve said that it feels like things are speeding up and now it feels even more so. Hey, maybe nothing will come of this. The markets could recover and people might feel comfortable going deeper in debt thus returning our economy to the good old days.

My guess is that the Fed will step up soon with a QE3 to help re-stabilize the economy. (Thus kicking the can a little further down the road.) I’m not sure if the people in government are mature enough to get their act together enough to get our good credit rating back.

These days I’ve stopped trying to guess what’s going to happen. If this were the old Star Trek I’d be on yellow alert right now. I sense danger, but nothing is quite dire enough to set off the red alert claxon. Yet.

So what’s your guess? Is this a little blip in the economy and things will soon be better? Or the country, nay, the whole world is going to hell in an economic hand basket? Or maybe, “What are you talking Jarhead? It’s business as usual in the world today.”